Thursday, May 20, 2010

As panics go, the current one is a doozy, eclipsed in modern times only by the Lehman collapse and the Crash of '87. Is Europe teetering on the brink of collapse? I suppose anything can happen, but surely it can't be very likely.

I think the explanation for the current panic is that investors are simply very skittish and the market is not nearly as liquid as one would like to think. Hair-trigger stop losses can overwhelm the market when the going gets tough. The panic feeds on itself. Pundits predict another calamity in the making. European policymakers do stupid things like prohibiting naked short selling.

With panic selling of equities comes panic buying of Treasuries. German 2-yr Bund yields are down to less than 0.5% (US 2-yr yields are 0.7%). 10-yr Treasury yields are down 75 bps from their April highs. As this chart suggests (my interpretation), yields at this level only make sense if we are on the verge of another recession. Yet there are simply no signs of a recession that I can find. Central banks are still very easy, yield curves are still quite steep, corporate profits are strong, commodity prices are still quite high, swap spreads haven't widened significantly, and many areas of the global economy are experiencing V-shaped recoveries.

Sovereign yields are very low, implied volatility is very high, gold is very strong and the dollar is up sharply against other major currencies, but the classic precursors of a recession are nowhere to be found—all this makes sense only in the context of a panic. When the panic subsides, prices are very likely to rise again, as this last chart suggests:

The 52 moving average of nonseasonally adjusted jobless claims has been heading down sinceOctober 2009 and continues at rapid pace ( about 2500 to 3000 per week)...we have never had a recession when this average was heading down conversely we havealways had a recession when it was heading up....

At some point the panic in the markets is going to make more businesses cautious on the economy and capital investments will begin to be affected. This will not play well in Washington. There is an election bearing down on the politicians and if our economy is percieved to be rolling over...whether it in fact is or not...will mean even more trouble for incumbents.

To help the situation in the short term we need, most of all clarity on the financial regs. No one knows the new rules going forward. Whatever it is, they need to decide. Next, we need the President to make SOME statement on the positive role Wall Street plays in the overall economy. Many have been bad boys in the last few years but the perception in Washington seems to be that they all need to be taken to the woodshed and thrashed within an inch of their lives...one by one. This is not helpful for economic confidence and certainly isn't going to inspire more hiring. At some point...and we may be approaching it now...the public at large is going to start asking, 'What's going on?' and the President and the ones in the majority in Congress are going to owe them some answers besides 'its those evil bankers up to their tricks again'. Now I do not believe that is what they will say. But they're going to have to say something. They will not fiddle while Rome burns. Expect something soon out of Washington.

One other thought. The Treasury should use this opportunity to shove as much debt out the maturity ladder as they possibly can. They're going to need it.

The yield curve is much flatter today. Banks will be losing their cash cow. The curve averaged around 280 basis for the 1st quarter and banks reported their best quarter, so expect bank profits to fall by 15-20% if the curve continues to flatten. The FED is still on their side though, so they got that going for them, which is nice.

per recession talk, you can't look at leading indicators. How long did they take to signal the last recession? The economy was already cracking and unemployment was climbing by late 2007 early 2008 but it was not a technical recession until late 2008. Continuing claims were climbing during that late 07-early 08 period just as they have the past month. I'm not suggesting that a double dip is on the horizon but I think economists put too much emphasis on slow moving indicators that take at least months of numbers to interpret.

And EURUSD is raising. Interstingly 1,215 was a very important level for SWF, a water mark (by the way we have a flood wave not seen from 1850 here in Warsaw)of entering into a loss zone in their reserves allocated in EUR.

I am waiting and watching too. There are terrific values available now but panic makes being early too expensive for large positions.

A VERY good trader I follow has just gone long Goldman Sachs (GS). He is a TRADER and could be out next week (or tomorrow) but he is very long financials and has as good a record as anyone I know. I am slightly underweight the sector but not much.